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Long Beach State will face Grand Canyon tonight at 630pm in the Walter Pyramid in the NCAA Final Four, with a trip to Saturday’s men’s volleyball national championship on the line. The Beach (25-2) have put in countless hours of work to get to this point, just one win away from playing for the sport’s ultimate prize.
“We’re excited to get into the Final Four stage and play a really good Grand Canyon team that’s had a great year,” said LBSU coach Alan Knipe at Wednesday’s pre-match press conference. “They’ve had a great year, we haven’t seen them during the course of the season but we have a ton of respect for them.”
The Beach boast a half dozen All-Americans and will have the home court advantage, with a large crowd expected.
“It feels nice to have the tournament in Long Beach here at home,” said outside hitter Nathan Harlan. “It’s awesome playing in now my third tournament, especially with the Long Beach crowd here. It’s exciting.”
The Beach face a Grand Canyon team trying to get to their first-ever national title match, fresh off a sweep of Ohio State. The two teams haven’t met this year but GCU is for real–with wins over UCLA but also losses to Big West opponents the Beach handled.
As with all matches among the nation’s elite, it will come down to serving and passing, and how teams execute late in sets. All the Beach players and coaches echoed that truism on Wednesday.
“It will just come down to who plays better volleyball,” said Clarke Godbold. “That’s it.”
The winner of tonight’s LBSU/GCU semifinal will face the winner of the 330pm UCLA vs UC Irvine match on Saturday at 2pm for the national title.
We’ll have live updates and full coverage from the match this evening.
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